It is a publicly known method to establish hybridoma (fused cell) which continuously produces and secrets a specific antibody by fusing a lymph corpuscle, or a B cell (an antibody-producing cell), which produces a specific antibody but is destined to perish in due course of time, with a myeloma cell, which continues to proliferate indefinitely in a culture medium, by utilizing the art of cell fusion. A monoclonal antibody produced by the hybridoma obtained according to such an art can be used as a pure chemical reagent of high accuracy and reliability and offers applications as a testing reagent, labelling reagent, and also in affinity chromatography. It is further expected to be used as drugs to cure and prevent various diseases.
It is accepted as general knowledge that an attempt to obtain a monoclonal virus antibody can be achieved by using a virus antibody-producing cell with a myeloma cell to give hybridoma, which is producible of a virus antibody, by cloning. Its concrete example is shown in Japanese patent application No. 2276/84, which discloses a process wherein a BALB/C mouse spleen cell, which is immunized to influenza virus or virus of rabies, is fused with a myeloma cell of a mouse of the same species to obtain a hybridoma, which is then subjected to cloning to give a hybridoma which produces a monoclonal antivirus-mouse antibody. Japanese patent application Laid-open No. 175489/83 also discloses that hybridoma which produces antiherpes simplex virus-mouse antibody was obtained by fusing a spleen cell of a mouse immunized to herpes simplex virus with a mouse myeloma cell.
As described in the above, definitely successful cases of antivirus antibody-producing hybridomas are limited only to the mouse-mouse hybridomas which produce antivirus-mouse antibodies. However, in case of making a diagnosis and providing a cure for human being disease, the use of an antivirus-human antibody comprising the homogeneous proteins is absolutely useful and safe, and this can be realized only by the established formation of a mouse-human hybridoma or a human-human hybridoma obtained by use of anti-body-producing cells of a human being. In the case of a human being, however, being different from the case of animals, there are problems which face us with difficulty of obtaining proper antibody-producing cells since it can not be arranged with ease to have a human being immunized to a large amount of viruses to get effectively stimulated antibody-producing cells for the desired cell fusion use, and there have been no reports made yet on definitely successful practices.